The present invention relates to rack-mounting systems, and more particularly to a modular rack-mounting system that is flexible for mounting instruments having different environmental requirements.
In many instrumentation environments a plurality of instruments are mounted in large racks. In order to mount the instruments in the rack, standard sizes have been implemented regarding width and height for each rack unit. As a result the instruments are sized to fit either into a full rack mount or into a half rack mount. In the case of half rack mounts, a full rack mount is generally provided with sleeves that separate the full rack mount into half rack mounts. A typical half rack-mounting system is shown in FIG. 1 where a current fixed rack-mounting system is shown having a pair of half rack sleeves welded together with a pair of bands welded around the front and back edges to provide structural stability. The sleeves have ventilation holes in them in a particular configuration to allow cooling air to circulate around the instrument according to the instrument's requirements when mounted in the rack. As long as all instruments have the same requirements for air circulation, for example, this fixed rack-mounting system is adequate. But as new instruments are developed, different air circulation requirements arise requiring different sleeve configurations.
To provide for all the different sleeve ventilation configurations to enable a user to mount instruments on the rack in any desired configuration requires an innumerable number of different rack-mounting systems.
Therefore what is desired is a flexible modular rack-mounting system that allows for the exchange of different sleeve configurations while maintaining a single rack-mounting system.